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Friday, April 02, 2010

A Murder Threat

It would seem, unless I am being grossly paranoid again, that your beloved correspondent has been threatened with murder. In the comments field under the post about the Election I wrote a couple of days ago, someone has left the anonymous warning: "Drive carefully. It is not only cars that can be recalled by their Maker."

I responded, of course, by daring the author of that cryptic remark to identify and explain himself. I doubt he (or she) will do that, or that their threat was anything other than a spasm of indignation at the breakfast table about something I've written, forgotten by them as soon as they'd finished their morning ablutions.

It was the anonymous nature of it that annoyed me. I make my feelings public. I stand up for my beliefs, and trust me, I lose a lot of friends and make a lot of problems for myself in the process.Conviction comes at a price and if you're not prepared to pay it, you really have to ask yourself how strong your convictions are.

I can't complain too much about the murder threat itself, however. A close friend of mine (who generally agrees with me) has predicted that I will be blown up one day; but I did threaten to kill the managers at my previous company on Facebook one intemperate afternoon, so I'm not entirely blameless in the area of wild threats of violence.

"I'd like to run them all through with a flaming sword," I wrote, only half-jokingly, when they'd upset my friend about something or other and she needed cheering up.

But I signed my name to that inflammatory piece (do you hear me, O would be assassins?), and got a one-week suspension and a written warning for gross misconduct as a reward for my elegant metaphor.